Someone new to museums might seem like a strange pick for
director of one of the country's oldest and most important ones.

Leading a museum involves not only developing a board, courting
donors, and building staff — things Pasternak has years of
experience with, if on a smaller scale — but also managing a
massive facility, a vast collection, a large team of curators,
and a budget most nonprofits can only dream of. That's why the
top candidates for these roles, which at the country's flagship
institutions come up only rarely, are usually hand-picked from
among those already high-up in the museum world.

Yet Pasternak's appointment, which will make her
the first woman to lead either of the city's largest two
museums, represents a significant shift in the art world and — as
one
longtime arts leaderargued
— it's an "inspired choice" by the Brooklyn Museum.

Full disclosure here: As someone who worked closely with
Pasternak for nearly two years at Creative Time, the organization
she has led for two decades, I'm not an impartial observer. I'm
basically a groupie: one of the many fans she's picked up along
the way. I can testify firsthand though that she consistently
inspires the people around her, pushing artists to dream big and
rallying employees and supporters to great loyalty and devotion.

That's the key behind Pasternak's rise to the helm of such an
iconic institution: not where exactly she's worked, but what
she's shown she is capable of imagining and — often against
challenging odds — executing to great acclaim.

"You can’t have expertise in every area in an encyclopedic
museum," Tom Finkelpearl, commissioner of
cultural affairs for New York City, told
The New York Times. "Mainly you have to be a good
evaluator and a good attractor of talent, and Anne is both those
things."

Anne Pasternak with David
Byrne at a Creative Time benefit in 2011.Astrid Stawiarz / Getty Images

Pasternak
ran a small gallery in the late 1980s, spent a year as the
curator for an alternative art space in Hartford (Real Art Ways), and co-founded
a nonprofit called BRAT. In 1994, the
Times notes, when Pasternak took the reigns at Creative Time,
"she was its only full-time employee." She was also only about 30
years old.

Along the way, Creative Time somehow held on to its alternative,
counter-culture appeal, embracing bold and provocative ideas
while drawing crowds of visitors to its events and exhibitions,
which are almost always free to the public. A proven record of
success with that kind of outreach — increasingly important to
major institutions that are shedding the stuffy reputations of
yesteryear — seems like it was one of the sticking points in the
Brooklyn Museum's decision, which is shaking up the traditional
power dynamics of the art world in the best way possible.

Pasternak may have never
worked at a museum — she has, it bears
noting, curated
museum shows — but that rare mix of visionary
leadership, art world street cred, and inclusive spirit seems to
be exactly what the Brooklyn Museum was after.

For Pasternak, who has helped
realize the dreams of a long list of artists during her tenure at
Creative Time, it's also a bit of a dream come true. "If there
was one job I fantasized about," she
told the Times, "it was being director of the Brooklyn
Museum."